In the early 20th century, thousands of boys were employed in
glass making industries. Glass making was a
dangerous and tough job especially without the current technologies. The
process of making glass includes intense heat to melt glass (3133 °F).
When the boys are at work, they are exposed to this heat. This could cause eye
trouble, lung ailments, heat exhaustion, cut, and burns. Since workers were
paid by the piece, they had to work productively for hours without a break.
Since furnaces had to be constantly burning, there were night shifts from
5:00 pm to 3:00 am. Many factory owners preferred boys under 16 years
of age.
An
estimated 1.7 million children under the age of fifteen were employed in
American industry by 1900
In
1910, over 2 million children in the same age group were employed in the United
States This included children who rolled cigarettes, engaged in factory work,
worked as bobbin doffers in
textile mills, worked in coal mines and were employed in canneries Lewis Hine's photographs
of child labourers in the 1910s powerfully evoked the plight of working
children in the American south. Hines took these photographs between 1908 and
1917 as the staff photographer for the National Child Labor Committee.
Factries
and mines were not the only places where child labour was prevalent in the
early 20th century. Home-based manufacturing across the United States and
Europe employed children as well. Governments and
reformers argued that labour in factories must be regulated and the state had
an obligation to provide welfare for poor. Legislation that followed had the
effect of moving work out of factories into urban homes. Families and women, in
particular, preferred it because it allowed them to generate income while
taking care of household duties.
Home-based
manufacturing operations were active year-round. Families willingly deployed
their children in these income generating home enterprises. In many
cases, men worked from home. In France, over 58 percent of garment workers
operated out of their homes; in Germany, the number of full-time home
operations nearly doubled between 1882 and 1907; and in the United States,
millions of families operated out of home seven days a week, year round to
produce garments, shoes, artificial flowers, feathers, match boxes, toys,
umbrellas and other products. Children aged 5–14 worked alongside the parents.
Home-based operations and child labour in Australia, Britain, Austria and other
parts of the world was common. Rural areas similarly saw families deploying
their children in agriculture. In 1946, Frieda Miller - then Director of United
States Department of Labour - told the International Labour Organisation that
these home-based operations offered, "low wages, long hours, child labour,
unhealthy and insanitary working conditions."
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